Corporate Governance
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TAMPA, Florida, May 21- As final ballots come in on a proposal to strip JPMorgan Chase& Co Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon of his chairman title, some worry about what will happen if shareholders win what will likely be a close vote.
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First Magnus Financial, one of the largest independent U.S. mortgage lenders, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, the latest home loan provider to collapse as the housing market slumps and credit crisis widens.
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Saks' CEO Steve Sadove says that he is optimistic about the luxury market and that they're seeing a strong purchase performance from new customers. For the second quarter the high-end department store posted a net loss of $24.6 million, or 17 cents a share, versus a prior-year net loss of $51.9 million, or 38 cents a share.
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Thirty years ago, I was in Las Vegas. My stepmother took me to see Ann-Margret at The Hilton and I remember our waitress telling us that Elvis was the only one who could consistently pack the room. It was strange that he passed away the next day. On this, the 30th anniversary of the King's death from overdosing on prescription drugs, the stocks of the companies that make prescription drugs are having a very dark day.
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Usually when a company announces cost cuts that will help improve cash flow and buoy profits, investors cheer and buy the stock. After the bell yesterday, Amgen revealed it's going to get rid of as many as 2,600 employees, cut its capital expenditures this year and next by nearly $2 billion and close or downsize plants. The measures are being taken to help absorb the blow from plummeting sales of Amgen's anemia drug, Aranesp, which is facing intense safety and reimbursement issues. This morning the stock is trading at a new multi-year low.
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Late Thursday, ImClone Systems announced it has finally hired a permanent CEO. It'd been without one for about two years. The biotech company which makes the cancer drug Erbitux and became reluctantly famous in the Martha Stewart stock-trading case tapped a guy named John Johnson for the role.
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The SEC mishandled an investigation of suspicious hedge fund trading that led to the 2005 firing of an SEC attorney, a U.S. Senate report says. The report from the Senate Finance and Senate Judiciary committees, released late on Friday, ends a yearlong inquiry into the dismissal of former SEC staffer Gary Aguirre.
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As Congress scrambled to finish up before summer vacation, I talked to House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri. Like all minorities in the House of recent vintage, the House GOP is getting steamrolled on vote after vote. But Blunt says he's happy with his party's positioning.
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It is standing room only here at the advisory panel meeting on GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia. I count about 300 people in the main ballroom and about 50 more watching on closed circuit in an overflow breakout room. The place is crawling with PR people, especially from Glaxo which like most drug companies at the center of a storm like this one has set up a war room here.
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Here are a few things I'll be following this week, as the capital battles summer doldrums: Washington Watches Wall Street. Top Bush advisers I talked to over the weekend shrugged off last week's market turbulence. One noted dozens of movements of similar magnitude on a percentage basis in recent years. Another cited Ben Stein's observation that market hand-wringing is "not anything but smoke being blown." The Dow opens Monday 6 percent up for the year.
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The world of business and finance may consider the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over foreign policy, which emerged at this week's YouTube debate, as irrelevant to their concerns. That view is wrong. It's true that, in a narrow sense, neither Wall Street nor the investor community has a direct stake in the back and forth over whether either prospective Democratic president would agree to face to face meetings with Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or other anti-American tyrants.
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Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards--once again seeking to drive the 2008 campaign debate within his party--will today propose raising the capital gains tax rate to 28% from 15%, and use the money to finance tax cuts for middle and lower income families. While raising the capital gains levy to that level, which Edwards points out was a rate once signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, Edwards proposes a series of breaks for those not currently thriving in the U.S. economy..
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The tax debate is sharpening. The John Edwards' campaign tells me he'll deliver a speech in Iowa tomorrow on tax policy changes to make the IRS code reward "work, not wealth" in a greater way than it does now. Details come in Des Moines tomorrow morning--just as Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is holding a conference on the need to cut corporate taxes to spur the economy.
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U.S. market regulators charged failed hedge fund Amaranth Advisors and its former head trader, Brian Hunter, with trying to manipulate natural gas futures prices.
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As Robert Palmer might sing it, 'we might as well face it, the Democratic presidential candidates are addicted to war.' Which is another way of saying that Iraq, the issue that has most driven down President Bush's popularity, is driving the debate in the Democratic debate as well. The economy is not.
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After a disappointing week for big pharma earnings, Merck and Schering-Plough start the second-half of the sector's reporting season with a bang. Both companies beat the Street on the top and bottom lines. Merck also raised its full-year earnings guidance to boot. And investors love it. Look at the huge move in the Dow component.
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The sound of marching military cadets is not normally considered the Democratic theme song. That makes the scene here in Charleston,SC, hours before the Democratic presidential candidates debate on the campus of The Citadel, decidedly out of the ordinary. But then there's nothing ordinary about this debate. In an attempt to link an old political format to new technology, questions will be posed to the candidates via YouTube.
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The conflict between Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom and CBS, and daughter Shari Redstone, vice chairman of the two media companies, grew more bitter on Friday: The paterfamilias publicized his displeasure with Shari's ostensible ambition to succeed him, in a harshly-worded letter to Forbes.
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A corporate governance paper on the private equity industry is expected to recommend greater financial transparency and improvement to corporate governance, which could include the appointment of independent directors, said the Financial Times without citing sources.
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JetBlue Airways appointed director Joel Peterson to the newly-created post of vice chairman.
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Ousted HealthSouth Chief Executive Richard Scrushy, acquitted two years ago in a major corporate fraud case, and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman were both sentenced to prison on Thursday for bribery.